July 29, 2016

Republicans don’t believe in facts; they operate on feelings. Knowledge about their philosophy was reinforced at the recent GOP convention when speaker after speaker gave their opinions, contrary to any facts. Afterwards, Newt Gingrich cemented the GOP emphasis of feelings over facts when he tried to prove that crime, at its lowest rate since the 1970s, had vastly increased because people “feel” that way. Here are some recent “feelings” from the GOP:

The North Carolina GOP “felt”—and wrote—that “[Tim] Kaine wears a Honduras flag pin on his jacket but no American flag. Shameful.” The pin, a single blue star on a white background with red stripes, is a symbol for “Blue Star Families,” those with loved ones deployed out of the U.S. Kaine’s son, Nathaniel, is a Marine lieutenant. For the uninitiated, the Honduran flag, adopted in 1866, is two light blue bars with a center white bar containing five blue stars. A variant version has the country’s coat of arms above an arc of five stars in the white band. The NCGOP corrected the mistake but did not apologize to Kaine for its accusation.

Trump’s acceptance speech, full of “feelings” and “misrepresentations,” received the lowest positive score Gallup has ever found: 35 percent of respondents said it was excellent or good. Among independents, 40 percent said it was poor or terrible. The convention made 51 percent of people less likely to vote for Trump while 36 percent said “more likely”—the highest “less likely in the last 15 times Gallup asked the question. Trump also received no “bounce” in the polls from the convention. Trump also asked his followers to not watch Hillary Clinton’s acceptance speech. Conservative pundits, however, “felt” that the Trump’s speech was a success.

Clinton gets a bad rap for the money she was paid by Wall Street, money that largely went on to elect Democrats. There’s no question how much Clinton brought in and what she did with it because the last 15 years of Clinton taxes are on her website. Republicans, however, do not “feel” concern because Trump refuses his tax returns, perhaps “feeling” that he’s telling the truth in his lie that he can’t make them public because he’s being audited. Records do show that he paid absolutely no taxes for at least four of the past 30 years, but he claims that taxes are “none of your business.”

Questions about Trump’s finances include his claims of generosity to charities; conflicts of interest he would have as president, especially after his son declared that Trump owes a large amount of money to Russia, the country that is promoting Trump’s presidency; and campaign contributions from foreign countries because of his solicitations. Foreign involvement in U.S. elections is illegal. Approached today about his taxes, Trump argued that people might find information that would cause damage to him as a candidate.

People who say they don’t get government aid is also a “feeling”: almost half the people getting this assistance deny that the federal government helps them at all. The poster boy for this “feeling” is actor Craig T. Nelson complained to Glenn Beck about how nobody ever helped him although he said, “I’ve been on food stamps and welfare.” Red states complain bitterly about wanting smaller government and less government aid, but almost all of them put in fewer tax dollars than they get back from the federal government. The blue states are stuck paying for the conservative red states.

Many people believe Trump’s claim that he will create many jobs, yet that “feeling” is belied by an analysis of Trump’s plans—such as they are—showing an economic downturn lasting longer than the Great Recession. Moody also predicts that 3.5 million people would lose their jobs in the U.S. during one term while home prices fall and unemployment, now below five percent, goes up to seven percent. In contrast, Clinton’s key policies would boost the economy and create 10.4 jobs in her four years, and GDP would annually grow from 2.3 percent to 2.7 percent. When George W. Bush left office at the end of 2008, the GDP was -0.92 percent (note the minus sign), yet people “feel” that the country is worse off than when Bush left. Between Bill Clinton’s last year as president and the end of Bush’s first year, the GDP dropped from over 4 percent to one percent. Although it rose somewhat during Bush’s next three years, it began its disastrous drop, leaving President Obama to deal with the Bush recession.

When poor Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) named Sarah Palin as his running partner, conservatives “felt” that she was a good choice, probably because she was attractive. The shine wore off, however after numerous interviews showed her arrogant ignorance. Now millions of conservatives, based on their “feelings,” plan to vote for Trump, who knows less about foreign policy than Palin does, if Nicole Wallace is to be believed. Wallace had the job of trying to educate Palin, and she said that Palin “was up all night studying and she understood that she was on the ticket with a man who was respected around the world” About Trump, she said, “He’s not even trying to learn.” Before her work with the McCain/Palin campaign, Wallace was Bush’s White House Communications Director; presidential political advisor Mark McKinnon, White House colleague, called her a “rare talent in politics.”

With the planes hitting the World Trade Centers in New York almost 15 years behind us, the terror has slowly faded. To get votes, the GOP needs to create a “feeling” that the country is in far worse shape than immediately after that event or the possibility of Japanese attacks on the West Coast during World War II or the fear of German spies during that war infiltrating the U.S. to support Adolf Hitler in taking over the nation. Rudy Giuliani claimed:

“Do you ever remember the world as dangerous as this? I don’t.”

Giuliani was the mayor of New York when 3,000 lives were lost on 9/11/01. His city was devastated for a period of time, and the country lived with panic. Mentioning that time, however, doesn’t cause the right “feeling” because that tragedy occurred under a Republican president who had received some previous intelligence about the attack.

Rep. Sean Duffy (R-WI) has a “feeling” about the reason for Trump’s popularity: white men have been neglected in politics. He “felt” that Trump referred specifically to white men when he said in his acceptance speech, “I’m going to fight for you.” When political parties try to include minorities and women in the dialog, “white males have been left aside a little bit in the politics of who speaks to them,” Duffy said. Demographics show that 80 percent of Congress is composed of white males although only 31 percent of the U.S. population is composed of white males. Duffy has also complained in the past that he has difficulty making ends meet on his annual salary of $174,000.

Trump has had extremely strong “feelings about the Democratic convention last week. In response to some of the speakers, he expressed anger to the extent that he wanted to “hit” them “so hard.”He seems to have had a particularly violent response to Democratic VP candidate Tim Kaine. Or it may have been Michael Bloomberg:

“I was gonna hit one guy in particular, a very little guy. I was gonna hit this guy so hard his head would spin and he wouldn’t know what the hell happened.”

As Ezra Klein wrote at Vox, “Trump can’t suppress his own mania for even a week.”

Like many other conservatives, Ann Coulter has a “feeling” that all Muslims are bad people. After Khizr Khan, talked about his pride in the U.S., Coulter tweeted:

“You know what this convention really needed? An angry Muslim with a thick accent like Fareed Zacaria.”

Khan’s son, Captain Humayun Khan, was killed in Iraq in order to save his men and posthumously received the Purple Heart and Bronze Star for his heroic actions. Right-wing radio host Sandy Rios’s “feeling” doubled down when she questioned both the loyalty of the speaker and his dead patriotic son.

“As far as I can tell, Islam, truly, supporters of Islam and the Quran, cannot embrace the Constitution.”

“Make America Great.” That’s what Benito Mussolini said during his visit to the U.S. in 1927. The fascist dictator assassinated political opponents and took liberty and freedom of speech from the Italian people. He joined Germany and Japan a few years later to form the Axis that planned to take over the entire world. “America First” was used in the 20th century when the America First Committee, associated with aviator Charles Lindbergh, formed to keep the U.S. out of World War II with its closeness to Adolf Hitler. These two phrases are the nationalist slogans of the Trump campaign.

I have a “feeling” that Donald Trump as president would be very dangerous for the United States—and I have a lot more reasons for this “feeling.”